Maust recalls death details
This story ran on nwitimes.com on Sunday, December 18, 2005 12:24 AM CST
CROWN POINT | The three, missing Hammond teens killed in 2003 did not suffer, at least according to their murderer, David Maust.They never knew what hit them.
Maust killed his 19-year-old co-worker, Nicholas James, on Friday, May 2, 2003."I just went after him. I don't know why, I just did. I planned to kill him three times but talked myself out of it.""I came up behind him. I hit him in the head. I hit him with a baseball bat. Not a real bat. It was a souvenir. It had lead in it. I hit him once. After the first blow he was out of it, but he was still moving, so I hit him again. He was still moving. I hit him again and again.""When he wasn't there (at work) Monday I missed him. I wished he'd been at work."Later that summer, Maust met Michael Dennis, 13."I just wanted to take him places. Do things. Take him to ball games. I could ride bikes and go to baseball games all day long."James Raganyi, 16, joined the pair."I gave them marijuana once. And yes, I gave them money. I befriended them. They should've just never been there. I'd think, 'Go home. Don't you got your own rooms?"The teens spent the night on July 19."It was the only night they stayed. When I woke up and they were OK, I felt pretty good I didn't hurt them."But the two came back, possibly for the booze Maust freely offered.On September 10, they went to Maust's home. They drank beer. Michael preferred Jack Daniels and cranberry juice, Maust remembered.Both passed out on the couch, never to awaken."James and Michael I killed hours apart...They didn't feel nothing.""The night I killed James I hesitated a long time. I'd get up to do it, then sit back down."Maust said he strangled James with a rope. He wrapped his body in plastic because he knew he'd be putting him in a damp grave.Five days earlier he broke up the cellar floor next to the raised concrete slab in which he'd entombed his co-worker."When I dug up the floor, water seeped in."After killing James, he turned to Michael."I was thinking of killing him all day, but also of scenarios not to do it."His compulsion to murder won out."For a lot of reasons. Abandonment. Him leaving. (I kept thinking) he shouldn't be here. Things go back to my mother -- what she taught me. Punishing myself by taking something precious to me that I liked by killing this boy."Other reasons seemed less ethereal."One, his friend was gone. Another part was I didn't want to do it at all, but I didn't know how to get out of it."And, Maust was concerned about Michael's health."He was in terrible trouble. If he survived that night he wouldn't have been right. He had dark blood coming out of his nose. He was having seizures and was posturing" (a specific pattern of involuntary muscle contractions).So he strangled Michael with the same rope. And prepared his body for burial as he did James'.Maust remembered a time before he killed the pair when they were at his apartment."One day I was going to go up and tell them what happens to runaways -- to scare them into going home. But a lady came over to give me some tomatoes, and I forgot all about the talk."And why those three?"Chance -- It could've been any kid. Some young people I lived with I didn't hurt at all."
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